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Charles Eliot Norton
| birth_place = Cambridge, Massachusetts | death_date = October | death_place = Cambridge, Massachusetts | resting_place = Mount Auburn Cemetery Cambridge, Massachusetts | occupation = Art history professor, literary scholar }} Charles Eliot Norton (November 16, 1827 - October 21, 1908) was an American poet, biographer and critic whom many of his contemporaries considered the most cultivated man in the United States.Dowling (2007) Life Overview Norton wrote Church Building in the Middle Ages (1876); translated the New Life (1867), and The Divine Comedy of Dante (1891); edited Correspondence of Carlyle and Emerson (1883), Carlyle's Letters and Reminiscences (1887), etc.John William Cousin, "Norton, Caroline Elizabeth Sarah," A Short Biographical Dictionary of English Literature. London: Dent / New York: Dutton, 1910, 288. Wikisource, Web, Feb. 16, 2018. Youth Norton was born at Cambridge, Massachusetts, on 16 November 1827. His father, Andrews Norton (1786-1853), was a Unitarian theologian, and Dexter professor of sacred literature at Harvard; his mother was Catherine Eliot; Charles William Eliot, president of Harvard, was his cousin. Charles Eliot Norton graduated from Harvard in 1846.Brittanica 1911, 19, 797. Career He started in business with an East Indian trading firm in Boston, for which he travelled to India in 1849. After a tour in Europe, he returned to America in 1851, and thenceforward devoted himself to literature and art. In 1862 he married Susan (Sedgwick).Brittanica 1911, 19, 798. From 1856 until 1874 Norton spent much time in travel and residence in Europe and in England, and during this period his friendships began with Carlyle, Ruskin, Edward FitzGerald and Leslie Stephen, which did much to bring American and English men of letters into close personal relation. Norton, indeed, had a peculiar genius for friendship, and it is on his personal influence rather than on his literary productions that his claim to remembrance mainly rests. T.J. Jackson Lears has described Norton as the foremost American proponent of the Arts and Crafts movement. In 1881 Norton inaugurated the Dante Society, whose 1st presidents were Longfellow, Lowell, and Norton. He translated the Vila Nuova (1860 and 1867) and the Divina Commedia (1891-1892, 2 volumes). In 1861 he and Lowell helped Longfellow in his translation of Dante and in the starting of the informal Dante Club. After work as secretary to the Loyal Publication Society during the Civil War, he edited from 1864 to 1868 the North American Review, in association with Lowell. In 1875 he was appointed professor of the history of art at Harvard, a chair which was created for him and which he held until he became emeritus in 1898. The Archaeological Institute of America chose him to be the first president, 1879-1890. From 1882 onward he confined himself to the study of Dante, his professorial duties, and the editing and publication of the literary memorials of many of his friends. In 1883 came the Letters of Carlyle and Emerson; in 1886, 1887 and 1888, Carlyle's Letters and Reminiscences; in 1894, the Orations and Addresses of George William Curtis and the Letters of Lowell. Norton was also made Ruskin's literary executor, and he wrote various introductions for the American “Brantwood” edition of Ruskin's works. His other publications include Notes of Travel and Study in Italy (1859), and an Historical Study of Church-building in the Middle Ages: Venice, Siena, Florence (1880). He organized exhibitions of the drawings of Turner (1874) and of Ruskin (1879), for which he compiled the catalogues. During the 1st years of the 20th century, Norton spoke out in favor of legalized euthanasia. He lent his name to a movement led by Ohio socialite Anna S. Hall to pass physician-assisted suicide legislation in Ohio and Iowa.Appel, Jacob M. 2004. "A Duty to Kill? A Duty to Die? Rethinking the Euthanasia Controversy of 1906" in Bulletin of the History of Medicine, Volume 78, Number 3 He died 21 October 1908 at “Shady-hill,” the house where he was born. He bequeathed the more valuable portion of his library to Harvard. Recognition Norton was widely admired for the breadth of his intellectual interests, remarkable scholarship and interest in the common good. He was awarded the honorary degrees of Litt.D. from Cambridge and D.C.L. from Oxford, as well as the L.H.D. of Columbia and the LL.D. of Harvard and of Yale. One of his many students at Harvard was James Loeb, who in 1907 created the "Charles Eliot Norton Memorial Lectureship" in archaeology.The Charles Eliot Norton Memorial Lectureship, Archaeological Institute of America The Charles Eliot Norton Lectures are given annually by distinguished professors at Harvard. See also *List of U.S. poets References * . Wikisource, Web, Feb. 16, 2018. * Dowling, Linda. Charles Eliot Norton: The Art of Reform in Nineteenth-Century America. (University of New Hampshire Press, 2007) 245pp ISBN 978-1-58465-646-3.) * Turner, James C. The Liberal Education of Charles Eliot Norton. (Johns Hopkins University Press, 1999) * Verduin, Kathleen, "The Medievalism of Charles Eliot Norton," in: Cahier Calin: Makers of the Middle Ages. Essays in Honor of William Calin, ed. Richard Utz and Elizabeth Emery (Kalamazoo, MI: Studies in Medievalism, 2011), pp. 59–61. Notes External links ;Books * ;About * . Original article i at "Norton, Charles Eliot" ;Etc. * Charles Eliot Norton Papers at Houghton Library, Harvard University Category:1827 births Category:1908 deaths Category:Harvard University alumni Category:Harvard University faculty Category:Eliot family (America) Category:Euthanasia in the United States Category:American art historians Category:American magazine editors Category:American translators Category:American non-fiction writers Category:Translators of Dante Alighieri Category:Burials at Mount Auburn Cemetery Category:American historians Category:Social reformers